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Nuclear vs wind
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Merrick
Merrick
2148 posts

Re: Nuclear vs wind
Nov 02, 2005, 19:03
"You can either work your way through it or you can go backwards."

This is such a subjective term as to be meaningless. You imply that we have to look for technological answers, and if we find none then just assume they do exist and will be found soon, and that anything else is 'going backwards'.

The continued use of methods and technoologies that work well is not 'going backwards'.

For example, organic farming is how we've produced food enough to feed ourselves up until the last 50 years or so. The methods in what is curiously called 'conventional farming' ruin the land, the wildlife and the quality of the food produced. They cannot be sustained for much longer, not only for the reasons just mentioned, but also because the chemicals they rely upon are derived from oil and gas, which are about to become prohibitively expensive, permanently.

So, in that example, what is the 'work through' response and what is the 'going backwards'?

Whislt I do beleive high technology to be intrinsically disempowering, i certainly don't want to do without all it brings. Big yay for sanitation, recorded music and modern medicine.

But yes, much of the trappings of the industrial age are going to disappear in the next generation or two.

"It is up to science to attempt to find self sustaining methods of travelling and that is, I believe, the right course of action."

This places blind faith in science to come up with them. Given that the oil crash is almost certainly going to happen within 20 years, given that fossil fuel consumption exacerbates climate change that threatens the very continuance of humanity and a serious proportion of other species, even if science does have no-problem limitless fuel a decade or two away, we should still be taking drastic measures right now to curb oil consumption.

Given that there are 6bn people here, and that'll likely be 10bn by the middle of the century, I think we ought to be finding ways of makingsure there's enough of everything for everyone. That means not fucking over the soil we get our food from (eg, we import milk and export it too! What's *that* about?), that means not squandering resources moving things all around the world that we've got right here, that means not using up more resources than the ecosystems that support us can handle.

Private cars and passenger aviation are two largely superfluous things that make a huge difference, and as such seem to me to be the place to start.

As it is, that wonderfuel is very unlikely to exist. I think we'd better work with what we know and what is likely rather than faith.
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Re: Nuclear vs wind (Rolling Ronnie)		 Replies:
Re: Nuclear vs wind (Wiggy)
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